Workbench

11/25/2008

I Say: Can We Help Fill Out the Paperwork, Maybe Jump-Start the Process?

Glenn Beck is so outraged by the bailout of banks that he wants conservative states to secede from the union:

So the question is, do states have the right to secede anymore? Because it was a compact. It’s not perpetual. In fact, in the Declaration of Independence it says it is our right, it is our responsibility to get away from a government who doesn’t listen to us any more.

Beck is not alone in his desire for patriotic conservatives to put an end to the vile United States. A couple of years ago, religious conservatives were getting ready to colonize South Carolina in order to avoid being exposed to sinful activities like gay marriage and Sean Penn movies.

Leaving aside, for a moment, the irony of self-declared patriots advocating the balkanization of the union, consider the sort of nation Beck and his righteous brethren would find themselves in if they were, actually, to leave.

Beck, of course, didn't enumerate which states he wants to take with him, so let's start with the working assumption that it would be those states that voted for John McCain in the last election. They can be assumed to be the last bastion of conservatism, just the kind of places Glen Beck wouldn't mind associating with, and by using them no one can accuse me of cherry-picking states to make my point. They are:

When Beck's done with his act of insurrection -- once they've burned all the American flags and surrendered their Social Security cards -- he'll be left with a country that has an awful lot of problems.

His new nation, separate at last from the liberal hell-hole he's so anxious to abandon, will contain nine of the 10 states with the lowest per capita gross domestic product and only one of the states in the top 10. While his conservative Utopia represents 32% of the electoral votes, it's only responsible for generating 26% of the nation's wealth -- and much of that is concentrated in Texas and retiree-intensive Arizona. Take those two states out and Beck's starting with an income base roughly 16% the size of the existing U.S. income base. That means there are an awful lot of poor people out there. In fact, they'll have eight of the 10 poorest states.

It will, however, enjoy the company of six of the top 10 states in rates of syphilis and gonorrhea. We'll see how abstinence-only sex education works on that.

Perhaps paradoxically, there will be an almost instant improvement of government services and decrease in taxes back in the liberal hell-hole, as the United States sheds some of its biggest deadbeats. Seven of the 10 states that draw the most from the federal government, relative to their tax
contribution, will become Beck's problem and not ours. Take Mississippi (please), which draws more than $2 in benefits for every $1 in tax it pays. Or model-of-rugged-independence Alaska, which snarfs down $1.84. Beck prefers those states to nightmarish Massachusetts, which makes do with $0.84 cents for every dollar paid. That tells me Beck has just the kind of math skills that are typical of his backward neo-nation. For the rest of us: All 10 of the states that pay the most federal tax and receive the least
payout in return will be left behind in the liberal hell-hole. They could drop their taxes an average of 25% and suffer no decrease in services.

The net result of canceling all that redistribution of wealth will be that Beck's poor nation will get even poorer, and the relatively rich nation against which he advocates treason will get even richer.

Ultimately, there's no better summation of the health of nations than life expectancy. Everything affects life expectancy, which is a broad, in-a-nutshell assessment of the success (or failure) of a society as whole. It is interesting to note that when Beck's Utopia launches, it's residents (not including the ones the government executes) will enjoy a slightly shorter life expectancy than the citizens of Uruguay.

Oh, and Tom, I realize that when it comes to attacking conservatives, facts are meaningless to liberals, but you might be interested to know that your quote that started your rant against 22 of the 50 United States was taken out of context from a discussion regarding this story:

What substance? Since Glenn is not calling for states to secede, it would appear that any substance in your post is invalidated.

Or do you mean your rant against 22 states simply because they voted against Obama?

If you consider that to be substance, then like I said, it is going to be an interesting, very divided, next 4 years. Evidently it isn't enough for Obama supporters that their chosen one was elected, now you evidently feel as if those who did not vote for him should be punished, attacked and belittled.

off topic. I am taking my wife's admonition that Obama is a very smart man and he will be able to manage his people well. So I am still feeling hopey. But changey? Not so much. (thanks for that, Frank)
The world's universities, think tanks, foundations and corporations are loaded with brilliant deep-thinkers and people of action who haven't served in previous administrations. I was thinking maybe we could give some of them a turn. Or as Inigo Montoya might have said, "Change. You keep using that word but I don't think it means what you think it means."

The substance is that conservative dogma doesn't work. States with the low tax rates advocated by conservatives have crappy educational and healthcare systems, and the advocacy of enforced ignorance about sex leads to high rates of disease and pregnancy.

I chose the states I chose not to punish them for voting for McCain, but to make it clear that I wasn't cherry-picking states to make a statistical point. I also did the numbers for the segment of the Republican base that I find most abhorrent, the social (as oppsed to libertarian) conservatives Glen Beck represents. That depiction of conservatives would be more heavily southern, cutting out North and South Dakota, Montana, and Alaska (which would go independent if the US balkanized) and adding North Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. In that case, the disconnect between Mr. Beck's idealization of conservatism and the on-the-ground reality was more pronounced. Again, I decided against using those numbers in favor of what I believe to be a more objective standard,

This has nothing to do with punishing or attacking states for not supporting Obama. That is entirely not the point.

This post is an attack on conservative delusion, not any particular state or states. Conservatives like Beck believe that problems will go away if the government just stops dealing with them and gets down to the important business of enforcing religion and cutting taxes. This doesn't need to be a theoretical argument. There are places where that has been tried. Those places are, as a matter of statistical fact, more mired in problems than places where liberalism flourishes.

The opposing, substantial argument that you could have made would be based on outcomes of great concern to conservatives. Abortion rates, for example, are higher in liberal states than conservative. If abortion is the most important thing in the world to you, that's meaningful success and reason to build a wall around, say, Massachusetts. You could have argued that sort of substance, rather than claiming that I'm corrupted by vicious hatred of conservatives that I don't, in reality, feel.

"The substance is that conservative dogma doesn't work. States with the low tax rates advocated by conservatives have crappy educational and healthcare systems, and the advocacy of enforced ignorance about sex leads to high rates of disease and pregnancy. "

Interesting, because in the social utopias where higher taxes are tried, the economies are failing and the state governments are running huge deficits; i.e. Michigan.

Another point, the higher pregnancies are not just a result of the state enforcing "ignorance about sex", it's also the attitude about what to do with a surprise pregnancy. Red states are more likely to promote abstinence, but also more likely to be unruffled by an unwanted pregnancy, while blue states are more likely to teach safe sex and promote abortion with unwanted pregnancies. This leads to higher teen pregnancy stats in the south because people there are more likely to deal with a surprise pregnancy by getting married and starting a family, while in the blue states they are more likely to abort the baby.

Read all about this interesting paradox in Margaret Talbot's article in the New Yorker. It's quite a fascinating read.